Why New Zealand farms? Why not EU or UK farms?
When we started looking for our wool provider, we endeavoured to find the right mix of sustainability and quality. To that end, we work with three farms in New Zealand that are at the forefront of the regenerative farming movement and can offer the highest quality Merino wool.
The fibre sourced from these farms offers a combination of a naturally technically brilliant performance, supreme softness and a high degree of durability. The reason that this quality is unique to certain regions like the South Island of New Zealand is due to the high degree of climate variety. Harsh winters and hot summers have meant the sheep have an evolved fibre that is very good at temperature regulating. This wool quality simply isn’t available in the EU or UK due to the more temperate climate.
In addition, and as counter intuitive as it sounds, it is far more sustainable to source wool from the farms we do in New Zealand, even if you take transport into account. The New Zealand farms we source from adopt such innovative land management practices - meaning they sequester far more CO2 per kg of wool than a UK/EU equivalent farm. All in all, transport only makes up a relatively small part of the footprint, +0.6kg of CO2 per KG of wool. Compared to the positive impact of -10.5kg of CO2 sequestration happening on the farm.
That being said, we are always open to changing our supplier should UK or EU farms catch up on both quality and sustainability credentials.
